Kimberly Funchess, left, and La’Tonya Ford, right, are two of seven plaintiffs in a racial discrimination lawsuit against Jackson National Life Insurance Company, on Jan. 16, 2017 in Denver. The two women, who were top performers in their divisions, both lost their jobs after being transferred to the Denver office.

A federal lawsuit accuses a Denver life insurance company of racial and sexual discrimination against seven top-performing Denver annuity wholesalers and supervisors who were all black.

The employees recount blatant racial and sexual abuse incidents, including one in which La’Tonya Ford, the top saleswoman of Jackson National Life Insurance Company, was ordered to get on her knees while her boss mimicked a sex act with a vodka bottle and fellow workers laughed. The Jackson employees said they were routinely demeaned, denied promotions and bonuses and fired when they complained.

Lawyers from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed the civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver. One of the seven, Kontar Tonee Mwamba, has since died. The plaintiffs are seeking back pay, punitive damages and future lost wages, according to filings by EEOC attorneys and private Denver attorneys Brian Moore, Lynn Feiger and Justin Plaskov.

The incidents allegedly occurred in the Denver Tech Center, where the world’s second-leading annuities firm with $4 billion in annual sales of insurance and annuities does business. The employees who were allegedly discriminated against were trusted with top accounts, including Wells Fargo and Chase Bank, but passed over for promotions by white men with lesser qualifications, the lawsuit says.

Gerald Maatman, a Jackson attorney, said the firm does not comment on pending litigation, but “Jackson is committed to the fair and sensitive treatment of all employees.”

Ford and former Jackson employee Kimberly Funchess recently sat down and discussed their careers with The Denver Post. Both said they felt inspired to speak out on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

At one point, they said, three of the women including Ford were huddled together in a broom closet hiding from their bosses because they didn’t want to be seen sobbing.

“They can’t see that they were breaking us down,” Ford said in the interview. “I wasn’t going to quit. They asked us to work 40 hours a week. We worked 80.”

Funchess, who owned her own Allstate Insurance office before being recruited by Jackson, said despite all the leaps and bounds the country has made since the beginning of the civil rights movement, there are still reasons to stand up and fight for civil rights.

“It’s still necessary to this degree. I think that is astonishing,” she said. “This is about principle.”

On March 17, 2015, the EEOC found probable cause that Jackson, which has more than 5,000 employees and is headquartered in Lansing, Mich., discriminated against black and female employees in recruitment, promotion and hiring. The agency found that Jackson created a “hostile work environment” against employees who were internal wholesalers, business development consultants and desk directors, the lawsuit says.

The allegations originated at Jackson National Life Distributors, a Jackson subsidiary, in its Denver offices at 7601 Technology Way. Jackson closed its Atlanta office in 2007 because, according to executive vice president Greg Salsbury, the hiring pool and the employees were “too black,” the lawsuit says.

Both Funchess and Ford were hired in Atlanta and transferred to the Denver office, they said. At about the same time, JNLD hired James Bossert as senior vice president of sales. According to the lawsuit he “fanned the fires of racism and sexism” and encouraged supervisors under him to treat black employees in a discriminatory manner, it says. Black employees were bullied and ostracized.

“Black employees were told that they could not be promoted because of the color of their skin,” the lawsuit says.

At a mandatory staff party at his home, division vice president John Poulsen allegedly told Ford to get on her knees, and he then grabbed a large vodka bottle and “started making thrusting motions with it, pretending the bottle was his penis,” the lawsuit says. “Everyone laughed while Ms. Ford was humiliated.”

White employees regularly pelted black employees from behind and in the face with balls. When Mwamba complained, Bossert “labeled” him as an “outsider” who doesn’t “understand the nature of his job,” the lawsuit says. Bossert countermanded a lower level manager who tried to stop the ball tossing. Pranks against black employees were common, the lawsuit says.

One plaintiff, Marcus Adams, sat on a pointed object left in his chair, and when he screamed other employees laughed. Adams had to go to the hospital for puncture wounds, the lawsuit says. When Adams wore a new suit to work, other employees yelled out, “Nice pimp suit, Marcus!” He was thereafter nicknamed “pimp.”

Bosart allowed white employees to hang a poster of President Barack Obama with exaggerated nose and lips, and depicting him as a thief who stole from poor white people for several weeks, the lawsuit says. Because Obama was president, white employees declared that “watermelon is going to be on sale,” and Obama will serve fried chicken in the White House. Some said he won only because black “crackheads” voted for him. One white worker wore an Obama mask to work with a monkey tail attached to his shirt, the lawsuit says.

“Black and female employees were discriminated against in nearly all terms and conditions of employment, including pay, territories, awards, training, and lack of support,” the lawsuit says. Black employees were denied production bonuses that they had earned.

Jackson used flimsy excuses to discipline black employees, the lawsuit says. When Funchess mistakenly claimed she took six days of vacation, rather than the actual five, Jackson fired Funchess. It didn’t matter that her mistake cost Funchess a day of accrued vacation and helped Jackson, the lawsuit says. Plaintiff Kenneth Conley was fired for coming to work “early” without permission. Alcena Gannaway was fired after she forwarded an e-mail that — “on its face” — said it was approved for circulation.

But white employees were not disciplined even when they were caught instructing employees to illegally “churn accounts,” lacked proper licensing to sell insurance, came to work drunk, masturbated at work or failed to meet basic performance quotas, the lawsuit says.

White employees who sought to promote or protect black employees were punished, the lawsuit says. Vice president Bob Blanchette was fired on the day he “defied Mr. Bossert” by giving Ford the positive evaluation she deserved. Bossert had ordered him to give her a negative evaluation.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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